


Jeanie's Night to Learn

by Merfilly



Category: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Genre: F/M, Yuletide, Yuletide 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 21:36:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,882
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/141967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cameron has a problem, Jeanie notices.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Jeanie's Night to Learn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fairy_tale_echo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairy_tale_echo/gifts).



_It was really stupid, with it being a part of them all our lives, you know. There my brother was, being his entitled, dork self, getting away with anything he could imagine to try, and I was being the sensible one, studying hard, keeping up my grades, and trying to be normal at a time when there was no such thing._

_Okay, so there has never been 'normal'._

_But I thought I shouldn't have been the one to figure it out. That kind of thing, the whole being different and not conforming to what society wanted? That was what Ferris **did**. Only this time... maybe Ferris was the one who just didn't get it._

`~`~`~`~`

Jeanie looked up just in time to see Cameron coming into the yard, his shoulders down in the same depressive slump they had been in for, well, most of his life. Anyone to see him would say he was on the verge of a complete nervous breakdown, on top of being ready to collapse physically. Unless, of course, you knew him. Jeanie took in the exact angle of his head, and recognized something she had seen only rarely in all the years of knowing Cameron.

He was hopeful.

As crazy as the summer had been so far, that might have been the craziest thing of all. Cameron was still laboring under the complete shattering of the rest of his tenuous connection to his parents. His mother had insisted on psychiatric evaluation, possibly as a way to make Cameron's dad chill out. Jeanie knew the man had fabricated a break-in story for the cops, and the insurance had paid him off, but other than the initial near-heart attack and shrieking at Cameron, his dad had basically erased Cameron from existence in his own ego-centric world.

All of Cameron's willingness to take a stand had been for nothing, though Jeanie had only heard about that through Simone, because Sloane had been admiring Cameron for finding a pair. Not that Sloane had put it that way, but Simone wasn't known for her repeats of the local gossip being verbatim, Jeanie knew.

How the summer had gone so far, with Cameron having therapy, on top of his dozen and one pseudo-illnesses, made that display of hope curious enough that Jeanie decided her sun tan could wait. She gave Cameron time enough to get over to where Ferris was supposed to be getting the grill ready for the barbecue later, but was actually amusing himself by laying the briquettes out in Pac-Man shapes or some other dorky thing.

Jeanie then used her invisibility to her advantage; Ferris was too used to ignoring her, and her ignoring him, that Jeanie could get close enough with the supposed intent of weeding to eavesdrop.

`~`~`~`~`

"I heard you and Sloane..."

"Hey, I'm one-hundred percent A-OK with this," Ferris cut him off. "Neither one of us can really afford to be tied down, or tuck our lives into 3 bedroom future with 2.3 kids and a dog."

"Good. I'm allergic to dogs," Cameron replied to that part of Ferris's self-denial.

"Cameron, you're allergic to naked mole-rats, probably." Ferris stopped messing with the briquettes to look up at his best friend since childhood. "Word gets around fast."

Cameron shrugged, mouth caught in a half-smirk, half-pensive thing that only worked on his features. He then looked down at his feet, staring at the white toes of the Chuck Taylors Sloane had talked him into for their graduation prank. The three of them... among others of their class... had worn Jams and neon-colored Chucky T's with their graduation gowns, and the girls had found bikini tops. Needless to say, Rooney had almost died of apoplectic rage when the seniors threw their caps off, and immediately dropped their gowns to run amok.

"What do you think?" Ferris asked, breaking his shoe contemplation to show off a pretty solid attempt at a Mario and Donkey Kong complete with barrel toppling down in charcoal on the oversized grill rack.

"Not bad." Cameron had moved into Ferris's space, and was leaning forward so his chest almost touched the back of his friend's shoulder. "So..."

"I think we should go see a movie tonight," Ferris said, turning suddenly, and Cameron had to bow his body while stepping back to keep from being right on Ferris's chest. Ferris didn't even really notice, moving on to the side to grab the lighter fluid.

"I'll get popcorn stuck in my filling," Cameron complained. "And the theaters are so...messy." Still, even Cameron could see the potential in going, especially with everything on his mind.

"Then just come stay over, tonight. Dad gave me his old beta-max." Ferris gave Cameron a sly grin, leaning in as he came back to the grill, and where Cameron stood. "I managed to 'acquire' some really intense flicks." His tone promised something harder than the average R-rating.

"Ferris!" Cameron protested, his voice as low as Ferris had kept his.

"Chicken? Prudish? Serious, Cameron; it's my moment of putting the past year to bed in my head, and moving on! You going to let me risk calling her up to take me back?" Ferris chided his friend.

"I might not … "

"Cameron."

"Mom says … "

"Cameron."

Cameron sighed. "I'll be over."

"Knew you would, buddy." Ferris grinned, and then went back to making fire the suburban way.

`~`~`~`~`

Jeanie slipped away from where she had been listening, not really sure of what was going on beyond her brother being a complete wipe at the whole break-up thing. Trust a guy like him to not understand that Sloane probably wanted to know where she fell in his worldview.

Then again, maybe Sloane could just finally see what a dip her brother really was. That thought made Jeanie quite satisfied all through the afternoon barbecue, and she smiled at her brother enough to make him positively paranoid. Which, Jeanie admitted, was just how she liked him.

`~`~`~`~`

Cameron slipped into the bedroom that was still overflowing with various electronic gizmos and childhood memorabilia. Ferris was already lounged out on the bed, and an inflatable mattress was set up on space that had been cleared. Of course, the things that had inhabited that space had been pushed to one side, creating even more of an impression of clutter and chaos.

It was so much a part of Ferris that Cameron took it for granted, even though it drove him vaguely crazy. Things had places. People had them too. Everything needed to fall right into place, and operate in an orderly fashion.

Yet Ferris violated that rule constantly. And still Cameron came around. He snuck a look over as Ferris, like always, was monologuing about his plans, or maybe it was something about the movie already playing, but Cameron's head was spinning with too many things of a more self-interested nature.

Ferris and he would be parting ways when college started. There were things Cameron needed to say before then.

"Ferris?" he finally said, halfway into the second movie.

"Yeah?" Ferris looked over at Cameron sprawling on his stomach on the inflatable bed. Cameron very nearly lost his nerve, but then it spilled out rapidly.

"Remember the summer we were fourteen, you know, when we..."

`~`~`~`~`

Jeanie heard the door to the back patio open, and then Cameron came out, gulping down air and his hands clenched in fists at his side. There wasn't even an instant of need to be smarmy at him; Jeanie could see that this time he was legitimately upset.

"Cameron?" She pitched her voice softly, calling his attention from that far off place his vision seemed to fall to when he was intensely upset. He turned and looked her way without truly understanding who she was or censoring himself.

"I can't tell him. I just can't. He's my best friend, and I can't tell him this because.... I just can't." He took a very deep breath. "I tried...but I wound up talking about the prank he pulled on Mrs. Johnson."

"Cameron, you're babbling. Come sit down." Jeanie scooted her chair over, curious just what secret Cameron was keeping from her brother. Of course, she told herself it neither mattered nor did she care, except she did. Life was changing so much, and would change more so soon. The way Cameron had been acting today just added a layer of Cosmic Chaos to it all.

Cameron did, responding to the quiet authority in her voice much as he was used to letting Sloane coax him. "He's leaving. I may never see him again. But I would rather..." he brought both his fists in front of him, tension throughout his body.

Jeanie's eyes flared wide in shock. If she was reading him right, Cameron was admitting something she had only seen in television, or read about incidentally in history class while discussing the Greek city-states and Alexander's 'friends'. She had to swallow; maybe she was wrong. Maybe Cameron and Sloane had fooled around, and he wanted to confess.

Jeanie looked back at Cameron, at that distant expression, and decided that no, her first instinct was the correct one. She didn't really know what to say, and proceeded with possibly the worst thing. "So you have a crush?" she asked, her throat dry.

The words snapped Cameron's face to hers, and he shook his head viciously quick to the sides, but his eyes were guilty. "No...no...it's...I..."

"Oh no. It's cool. I've read the book and some other stuff," Jeanie bluffed. "I can listen."

Cameron blinked several times, then hesitated with the look of a boy ready to flee into the night. Jeanie reached over and put her hand on his.

"It's bothering you. And...we might not be best of friends, but the stupid dork is my brother, and you're my friend too, in weird ways. Even if I did have to rescue you from having a frog put down your shirt when I was seven."

"It was a toad. And huge," Cameron retorted. "It looked rabid."

They shared a weak smile over that incident, then Cameron looked at her shyly.

"I don't know if it is … that way. But I know that I'm kind of panicking daily, more and more, as it gets closer to time to go to school."

Jeanie sat forward to listen, and Cameron started telling her everything he wanted to say to Ferris. Jeanie wasn't certain if this was the best thing to do, but she'd changed a lot from having someone to talk to once. The least she could do was listen like that boy had.

It might even give her a reason to give her brother more hell than usual, as Cameron told her things that made her see this had been coming a long time, and Ferris was absolutely clueless for once.

`~`~`~`~`

_All Cameron wanted to do, that night, was get it out in the open. He admitted that much to me. And I think he was right, even if he shocked my sheltered, suburban life silly by admitting anything like what he was feeling._

_I just have to say, after spending half the night talking and listening to him, my brother better not hurt Cameron. And if the sneaky dork knew all along, I'm totally kicking his butt._

**Author's Note:**

> The shock and narrow POV here is what I see as 'typical' of a Reagen-Era Suburbanite teen. It in no way reflects my views of sexuality in teens.


End file.
